Definition of Theft?

Sure, but
a) the fact that SEO specialists can charge tens of thousands of US$ for their services is a fairly good sign that the "time to acquire knowledge and experience" is substantial, or enough to require a full-time profession;
b) on SL, especially, it's not desirable to have all content funneled through a test requiring a single set of knowledge that may be nothing to do with actually producing the content.

You tend to write as if anyone could spend a few weeks browsing forums and then optimize their parcel. If that was true, they'd be better to - after those few weeks - start selling SEO services for several hundred times what they would earn in-world.

I assume that the restrictions on lawyers is in reference to some jurisdiction other than the U.S. or in some specific jurisdiction in the U.S. If the latter, I would like to know where it is in the U.S. The only general restriction that I am aware of that effects lawyers is the one on contacting other parties to a case when the lawyer is working pro se. Not a matter of not paying, but a matter of the danger that a lawyer contacting a non-lawyer could create an unfair advantage for the lawyer.

Pro se representation is generally considered close to an unabridgable right in the U.S., even for the lawyers. I think the above restriction is a professional ethics one, not necessarily a legal one.

There are advantages from contacts, from expertise, from skill, from special knowledge. That's the way it is - life is impartial, not necessarily fair. We all had choices on how we developed along the way, what we learned, etc. Look how expertly Charlie Rangel applied his special knowledge of taxes...

there is search engine optimization and there is gaming the search engine

to optimize your page/place/whatever for a search engine is to extract all the potential it has for being ranked correctly, to game the search engine is to exploit flaws in the algorithm to get ranked without actually deserving that ranking according to the intentions of the creator of the algorithm

(that is how I understand the meaning of those two expressions, or at least that was my attempt to explain my understanding, dunno if I managed to explain it right, or if I understood the things 100% the right way)

As far as I'm aware, Google know that their algorithm tends to disfavor commercial sites (because sites don't typically link to their competitors, and individuals have low pagerank) - but they don't mind, because it lets them sell commercial placement for income.

Unfortunately not - at least, not Google. I'll explain why.

Google has two indexes - a main one, in which all words from all pages are stored, and small one, in which only the words from IBL link texts and page titles are stored. When they service a query, they first look in the small index and, if they get a large enough results set from it, they don't even look in the main index. So *only* IBL link text and Title count most of the time, because they mostly get a large enough results set from the small index.

That was true for the time I was in seo - before Google, up to a couple of years ago. They've been playing around with things, of course, and it may not be entirely true now.

Nothing is "the way it is" in SL. The Lindens could change everything by pulling a single plug. When the "gods" walk the Earth, you can point to the person responsible for everything

I would say that optimization is following clear and logical steps, like including relevant keywords (and metatags - say, Linden folks, why don't we have these?). Gaming, on the other hand, is using secrets that are more about the search engine than the site - such as using low-frequency keywords purely because they are low-frequency, to be top of those searches. This is gaming because to do it, you have to study the search engine's keyword frequencies, which are nothing to do with your own site.

Not really. The reason that SEOs can charge so much is because the results they produce are perceived to be worth that much.

Maybe they would do well selling their services. I don't know. What I do know is that it really doesn't take long to learn what's here in this forum, because Cristalle collected all the suitable posts, and made a thread from them, which became a sticky. It might take more than a cursory read to get the gist of how the main points work, but it still doesn't take long.

Ask Marcel how he got up to #3 in quite a competitive field for his main searchterm. Then ask him how he got to #2. And when he's told you that, ask him how he then got to #1 - pushing me down to #2 Getting to #3 was done by following what's there for all to see in that sticky thread. It's only after that that more detailed knowledge is needed, that isn't written in that thread. I didn't tell him what it was, but I did help him to find it, and he went to #2. A few days ago he took my #1 spot. Neither of us yet know why, but when I have time (when I can be bothered), I'll look into it in fine detail. At that level, more knowledge is good - even if it's just knowing the sort of things to examine. But before that, enough can be learned from this forum, in a short space of time, to make great strides up the rankings.

The difference being whether or not the "optimizations" are themselves valid measurements of relevancy. Traffic caused by real people who made a choice to visit a parcel and hang around or not would be valid since it can be used to infer popularity. Bot traffic isn't because it's meaningless and manufactured out of whole cloth. IBLs caused by someone adding a place to their picks because they think it's genuinely worthy of people's time are relevant (again because they can be used to infer popularity). Paid picks are not because they destroy the relationship between popularity and IBLs. Keywords that are representative of what the parcel has to offer are relevant. Bogus keywords are not. People who feed the engine fraudulent data aren't "optimizing." They're defrauding.

Which means that a company couldn't, say, devote a salaried employee to doing it for a month and get the same result. (If they could, why would they spend more than a month's salary on that result?)



Except that once the knowledge is public, it's worthless in competition, because everyone knows it and the competition becomes a tie. In that sense, revealing knowledge can actually be a deliberate tactic. It's no coincidence, I'm sure, that the basic SEO guides on the web are written by SEO specialists.

is there a Jira entry asking LL to start punishing people that try to influence the ranking of their pacels artificially? (meaning thru ways that aren't getting their ranking more acurate, but getting their ranking up regardless of actuall connection to the qualities of the contents of the parcel, basicly a request to have people who game the search be punished, Google does it, why not LL?)

On the web, results are not obtained in the space of a month. A company could use an existing employee to work n hours a week on the job, but they prefer not to do it that way. They prefer known experts. It's not that it couldn't be done that way; I suppose it's a matter of confidence in achieving what they are paying for. But that's the web and this is SL. Great strides can be made up the rankings by anyone who is willing to take just a little time over understanding what's written in that sticky.



It would only become a tie if everyone did exactly the same things, and had exactly the same content, etc. Even so, much of the knowledge is there in that sticky for all to use. Most people don't use it though.

Yes I understand that.
The small index is one of the reasons why it is valuable for the IBL sites to create the hyperlink with relevant text rather than a lower-value URL.
However I do have personal experience of a situation in which Google clearly ranked a site with content being used as a major ranking factor.
My company was tasked with creating a site that needed to compete with established sites -- by yesterday. We didn't have the luxury of time to expend on the usual organic process. We convinced the client to invest resources in the pure content -- lots of it.
Two days after the site went live it was ranking #2 and #3 in Google for a range of relevant queries. This was in competition with established sites benefiting from numerous quality IBLs. The only IBL to the client's site in the indexing window was our own company site.

Clearly Google would attempt to optimize response times via the more compact index.
On the other hand they are well aware of the abuse of their engine by dishonest people who style themselves as SEOs. It's a no-brainer that left unchecked, the activities of low-lifes would devalue their service.
It's the old story. Someone has to strike a balance between the dream and the bean-counters. Google now have a model based on transparent paid-for placement. However, without the on-going base of organically relevant unpaid listings, that paid-for visibility will be devalued.

Google is in the big wide world. They can afford to leave things a bit loose in terms of serving relevancy.
SL is a very small world. The environment of a limited audience is entirely different. LL would be well advised to pay huge attention to ensuring that search ranking within SL is not subverted.

Things may have changed significantly since I stopped doing seo. I stopped soon after they changed the system so that the number of pages that a site has in the Main index (the large and small ones combined) is dependant on the site's linkage profile, which takes into account both IBLs and OBLs, and also the quality of those links - the page topics at each end of the links. The rest of a site's pages went into the Supplemental index, which they'd changed beyond all recognition. Also at the time, they had one datacenter that pulled from the Supplemental index if sufficient "quality" results weren't obtained from the Main index, and that system was expected to go onto the rest of the datacenters the following year. They were making big changes, but even so, that experience of yours does surprise me. They really can't go the way of majoring on content. or they will suffer from what their predecessors suffered from. I imagine there's more to that example than just majoring on content.

Yahoo on the other hand see things a little differently and feel that paid links can be relevant.

This isn't google or Yahoo however, it's Second Life and Linden Lab define what is and isn't acceptable. I'm pretty sure they change their ranking algorithms on a regular basis.

I understood Sling's post to mean AdWords and AdSense.

Yes that's what he was talking about with paid for placement, but Yahoo don't see paid links as irrelevant in the way Google do.

That's true. Google's solution for their paid links problem is laughable though.

It's like this....

Hold the horses and let me explain what I said and why I said it then

During the discussion, by mentioning figures, you showed you have some influence. Nothing wrong with that. Not even meant as critique. But, even if you did not mean to do it, it ended up in showing how much influence you have.


Did not say that. What I did say, is that you think your influence is bigger then Phil thinks. Phil thinks it is marginal, you think its more substantial. Does not even matter who is right. But that is what I meant with it.

Yes you did exactly the way I said: implicitly. By comparing bot runners with thiefs, you implicitly compared Phil with a thief. At least in my perspective.

That is not why I IMmed you. I do believe systems like yours work. The only thing I said, is that I might return in a few months to prove either one of you wrong. Changes are very low on that though, it was a way of speech. If in a few months I notice an increase of sales from your system, I am happy. If not, there is no loss.

You sounded like you felt attacked, but there is no need for that. Neither you not Phil were under attack, I was merely adding up what I read in the thread

The people that take advantage of the flaws are the same people that pay tier and sometimes a lot of tier to LL so maybe they (LL) do not want to lose any money and Google is a search engine for internet websites while SL isn't so you cannot compare the 2 imo.

Alright. I am going to admit straight up I haven't read all of this thread. I have skimmed it, but I haven't read every single response....just enough to get the gist of it.

And using bots is a form of theft and I will tell you why I think that.

I have a full sim where I sell my pets, and I also have satellite stores on Ramos Isle and Depoz, and one over at the Munich Sim, and i don't really need any other locations, but a good friend of mine researched numbers on a mall in SL and asked me if I wanted to share some space with her. She didn't need all the prims, didn't need all the space. So we went over and set up eyecatching adorable areas for selling.

And in a month's time...not one sale.

I started to wonder about that, so I looked up the location and there they were...little green bots all lined in a row. They have ZERO traffic, just a bunch of freaking, lying, deceptive bots. You don't know how much I want to expose these charlatans.

Now I don't care who sells a million lindens a month *coughbullshitcough* but anyone who doesn't see that this is lying, that doesn't see that its deceptive, that sees its not cheating not only the search system but our fellow residents, is duplicitous and not to be trusted.

I am going straight over there as soon as I hit Post and rip all my items out of that crappy little nowhere, nothing, zero, zip, crap mall and I am going to fire off a really nasty memo to them thanking the assholes for wasting MY time while lying about THEIR numbers.

A POX ON BOTS! A POX ON THE PEOPLE WHO USE THEM! A POX ON THEIR STORES!

This is an example of where I feel bots are being used deceptively, because they're selling traffic at a mall. In some cases it may work, but, in reality if you're making claims about your traffic to attract others it should be transparent traffic.

Ooer. Methinks someone isn't amused

We actually went through this before in a recent thread. It is entirely up to you to determine whether or not a mall where you are considering setting up has any traffic or not, and it's entirely up to you to determine whether or not it uses bots. They are not hidden from you, as you just found out.

If the mall owner puts the traffic forward as a positive reason to rent there, I'd agree that it is lying, cheating and thieving.

Thats exactly right Ciaran. My friend picked this mall based on the traffic, and in fact, it wasn't real traffic, but bots. As I was over there picking up my items, the mall manager came by to chitchat, and boy did she ever get an earful. Her claim was the mall didn't use bots, and that they were models. *insert derisive snort here*